Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vott, the senior content director here at Word on Fire.

Today we're going to pick up the thread we began weaving a couple weeks ago when we shared the first half of Bishop Aaron's recent Q&A with a group of students from Princeton University.

The Q&A was hosted by our good friend, Leo LeBresco Sargent, who is a fellow of the Word on Fire Institute, and was graciously hosted by the Aquinas Institute at Princeton's Catholic Campus Ministry.

Again, if you missed the first half, look back in the archives. I think it was episode 270, it was two weeks ago.

But we're going to pick up in the middle of their Q&A and continue on through the end.

So sit back and enjoy this lively Q&A between Bishop Aaron and students at Princeton University.

Thank you, Leo. Thank you, you're up, you're up, since it's...

I'm wondering who are some of your biggest role models and influences, both when you were entering college and as you were about to leave college.

And if you have any suggestions for thinkers or lives of the Saints to read while we're in these different stages, I like...

Yeah, good. When I was in high school, it was Thomas Aquinas made the biggest difference in my life.

I heard one of the arguments for God's existence when I was a kid. I was 14 in freshman high school.

And even though I was a Catholic going to Mass, I wasn't really all that interested in religion.

I was interested in baseball at that point in my life. But something about that experience of hearing that argument had a huge impact on me.

And it led me down this path. And it's really God's truth to say, I've never substantially left that path.

From the time I was 14 to my present age, which I won't tell you.

But Thomas, therefore, has been one of the touchstones for my life.

I've done most of my academic work around Aquinas. He's the one I've gone back to most often in my own writing.

Most of my work sort of ends up centering around him in some way.

So Aquinas, you know, the patron for your institute there, is the most important figure for me.

When I was a young man, two, Thomas Merton. He was not read as much anymore. I don't know if you even know that name.

Merton, who had been a kind of a whirlwind to use an old fashioned term, a man of the world.

He was a master's degree from Columbia in English literature. He wanted to be a novelist, like Hemingway.

...